Do you agree with a deer cull? © kyle Moore Photography

Poll: Do you think there should be a mass cull of deer?

David Bale Thursday, March 7, 2013
12:26 PM

Experts are urging all-out war on deer, which could see close to a million animals being shot each year in the UK.

Culling on a massive scale is necessary just to keep the exploding deer population at its current level, they say.

The call to arms was made after new research showed that only by killing 50-60pc of deer can their numbers be kept under reasonable control.

This is slaughter on a far greater scale than the 20-30pc culling rates recommended before.

With total deer numbers estimated at about 1.5million, it could result in more than 750,000 animals being shot every year.

Deer are said to be having a devastating effect on woodland, damaging crops, causing road accidents and threatening a danger to public safety in urban areas.

Dr Paul Dolman, from the UEA, said shooting by trained and licensed hunters was the only practical way to keep their population in check.

see the full story in tomorrow’s Evening News and Eastern Daily Press

30 comments

The only animal on this planet that needs culling is Humans. No other animal has the ability to create a veritable Utopia of this world and yet we choose to destroy it and every other species living upon it for the sake of our arrogance and greed? If the Human race is so intelligent why do we destroy everything we touch? "Every other mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with it's surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and multiply, and multiply until every resource is consumed and the only way to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet which follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A Virus! Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."

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Wolfie Sab Ipswich

Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Selfish sub human strikes again!

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Paula Howarth

Wednesday, March 13, 2013
There is only one species that needs to be culled due to there being far too many and that has to be humans, pure and simple. Because there are so many of us, the planet is being destroyed by our need for food, fuel, etc. leave the deer alone, they are harming nobody.

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Paula Howarth

Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Amazing how people think themselves so highly - we have messed up mother nature so badly and we with great minds can only see one way out of this problem HUMANS have created and that is yet again - yes KILL !!!! There are and have always been alternatives to killing but you all wait until the situation is so 'out of control' before you decide to do something. We take over their land - we eliminate their predators and then complain ! Everyone is too late when it comes to our GREAT MINDS protecting our planet. Yes we do need a lesser population, such as the human one. Stop people from having kids and collecting welfare in order to care for them and giving them bigger houses because they are having yet even more kids ! And use non lethal population control methods for the deer that are available !

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Mary Pollard

Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Man is indeed a menace not only to himself but just about everything else I can think of, doesn`t change the fact that we are top of the pile though and as such are arch destroyers. We require vast amounts of all kind of resources and given our love of waging war perhaps we are not doing so bad overall. Mr Bunn we humans are top of the evolutionary tree but we must not beat ourselves up because we are not perfect.

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John Bridge

Saturday, March 9, 2013
'We are missing the point here {particularly the tree huggers}, nature has given mankind a brain that has far more capacity to reason than other animals. Hence we will always put ourselves first and become top of the food chain, deer are a serious risk to road users, not because I say so but because it is a fact, a cull is perfectly reasonable.' Started off well, but turned into emphasising the problems with humans, putting themselves first. Are deer a serious risk to road users, or are road users a serious risk to all other animals? Most of it is down to poor road design and restricting animals going onto them, so your superior brain theory runs a bit short there as it's humans that created them, and humans that wiped out predators, and humans that introduced animals to rplace those hunted out, so the only animal to blame for this mess is...humans! Yes we are in some regards the most intelligent animal, but not necessarily that intelligent afterall, if not roads and animals would never mix would they. Fact!

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Jason Bunn

Saturday, March 9, 2013
@Crazy - where do you get the figure of £3m.? Is a sparrow more valuable than a robin? What's a blackbird worth?

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Colonel Grumpfuttock-Horseposture (retired)

Friday, March 8, 2013
So I saw a chap on TV last night saying its needed because it destroys habitat that much our bird population needs to survive. So lets cull the cat population which is responsible for killing in excess of £3m birds each year. Oh wait, not our furry little friends!

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Crazy

Friday, March 8, 2013
That old favorite of mine of anything to do with the UEA...Follow the money, reveals a stonker of a quote.... Deer are also hampering efforts to tackle CLIMATE CHANGE, the research found, because they destroy forest plants that could otherwise be used to help meet government targets to produce more wood fuel.

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nrg

Thursday, March 7, 2013
i have seen first hand the damage that where there is a over population of deer can cause..they do destroy habitat where other animal and woodland creatures live.

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bluelight

Thursday, March 7, 2013
We are missing the point here {particularly the tree huggers}, nature has given mankind a brain that has far more capacity to reason than other animals. Hence we will always put ourselves first and become top of the food chain, deer are a serious risk to road users, not because I say so but because it is a fact, a cull is perfectly reasonable.

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John Bridge

Thursday, March 7, 2013
I don't want to sound like some idealistic vegan or anything here... (!) but I don't see why we feel we have the right to cull (essentially kill or commit animal genocide) because we feel the animals are imposing on us, when we are expanding our concrete jungle world into their territories. And as people have quite rightly stated, but using mass hunting over the years we have upset the natural balance. I'm getting a bit fed up with humans feeling we have a monopoly over everything. I apologise if anyone disagrees, but I think we are far too liberal with targeting nature whenever it seems to disagree with us rather than trying to find a way to live in harmony.

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ValleyGirl

Thursday, March 7, 2013
'Dr Paul Dolman, from the UEA, said shooting by trained and licensed hunters was the only practical way to keep their population in check.' No Dr. Paul, predators can do that fine as they have for millions of years without us to interfere. As for saying shoot as many non native deer as you like as they are not native, remember that they were introduced because all the native species had been hunted out, and after all this time they are as native as they can be, we could say the same for pheasants and many other game birds introduced as native species have been hunted so much they were wiped out here, and even then we still need to rear millions of pheasants every year as too many are shot to be sustainable, ie lowland conservation isn't really conservation at all, mainly it's just about cash in someones pocket, nothing to do with conserving anything. Best idea is get back to where nature should be with a balance of predators and prey, it's only humans that have messed up that natural balance and it's only humans who whine about it. Many other nations have learnt to live with predators too, bears, wolves etc, we'll have to learn too. The only animal that could be justifiable 'culled' for it's proliferation, success, lack of population control by anything, spreading of diseases, destruction of habitat, the environment and animal species etc, is humans. Nothing humane in shooting an animal anyway, many are just injured and live in pain or die from their wounds....eventually, so in reality it is cruel. 'Pest to farmers' 100's of nuclear bombs couldn't lay waste to as much land as farming in this country does making it bland, 'alien', decimated, destroyed. Funny how some people say wind turbines in farmland are alien, when everything in and about that farmland is alien to what that same land and the life it supported (other than us) was.

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Jason Bunn

Thursday, March 7, 2013
Domestic dogs first, or their keepers.

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Mad Brewer

Thursday, March 7, 2013
Most deer are not UK natives. Many were introduced as fashion items onto country estates from whence they have escaped and now proliferate unchecked throughout the countryside, not only posing a danger to road users, but also a serious pest to farmers, forresters, gardeners, etc.

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Mr Cameron Isaliar

Thursday, March 7, 2013
A necessary evil, unfortunately, but, numbers are reaching unsustainable levels. I don't think they are quite so disease ridden as foxes, but, there is the risk of the tick carried Lyme's disease. How much of a venison "harvest" there would be, but it is a leaner and healthier meat than most.

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Muggas Budal

Thursday, March 7, 2013
Another attack on the UK's wildlife, Badgers, Deer, Foxes, the list goes on. Need to look at the bigger picture people.

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Crazy

Thursday, March 7, 2013
How about re-introducing lynx, and wolves in the uplands, to help redress the balance in a more natural way? Personally I have no issues with shooting as many muntjac as possible as it is an introduced, non-native species. They do taste pretty good though and I'd much rather eat wild deer than farmed meat with all its antibiotic residue, high carbon footprint etc.

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Betty Swallocks

Thursday, March 7, 2013
I would rather see a massive cull of greedy developers and corrupt council officials who are doing far more damage to the environment than billions of deer could ever do.

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Joe Mullets Uncle

Thursday, March 7, 2013
Get rid of them. Muntjac Deer and motorcycles do not mix!

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nnaw

Thursday, March 7, 2013
There are plenty of muntjac in our local woods and I would be interested to know by using which method, these will be culled?

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Bruce87

Thursday, March 7, 2013
I'm up for killing a few, anybody else? Take a few tinnies and make a weekend of it...

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Valpy Word

Thursday, March 7, 2013
Deer geese and rabbits should be ruthlessly and regularly culled then cooked and frozenand then parachuted into areas where the population are short of grub.Mind you deer will take some culling, just getting near enough to pull the trigger would be difficult.

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John Bridge

Thursday, March 7, 2013
one thing i am sure of,if the cull (EDP Kull) goes ahead, we will not see any cheap venison in this country, maybe a bit of horse be sold as deer.--- Just pick any news story EDP publish online, they never proof read.

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ggj666

Thursday, March 7, 2013
If I may be so bold as to comment on the actual story. Whilst the UK needs the cull the venison mafia of the UK don't want this to happen because it will flood the market with cheap meat and devalue venison.

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Gary Dickenson

Thursday, March 7, 2013
But will this result in cheap, home-grown and free-range, quality venison landing on the meat counters? I doubt it very much. At least it would be honest food unlike the now infamous horse-meat scandal. The meat resulting from such a cull should be properly used and not just bulldozed into landfill!

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Walsham Boy

Thursday, March 7, 2013
"Kull" is an interesting new word splicing "kill" with "cull" and introducing a subtle nuance.

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JCW

Thursday, March 7, 2013
I agree. Shaming for the EDP that Cull has been misspelt with a K - and printed in the headline. Yes the deer population do need to be controlled especially Muntjac who seem to breed prolifically and do much damage to vegetation.

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caroline jacobs

Thursday, March 7, 2013
Perhaps Mr. Dolman would like to be stood up against a wall & have somebody shoot at him. Perhaps we need an annual "cull" of so-called "experts".

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Colonel Grumpfuttock-Horseposture (retired)

Thursday, March 7, 2013
1 out of 10 for spelling. But yes a cull would be useful with the amount of vegetation they destroy. But it must be done in a humane way.

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d, west lynn

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Poll: Do you think there should be a mass cull of deer?

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